[Two replies for the price of one!]
On Sunday, "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> typed:
] >So I went off to real.com and downloaded version 5 of their real audio
] >player software (the current version is 7). The site seemed to claim that
] >my:
] >
] >486 75Mhz Pc with Vesa Local Bus
] >win 3.11
] >internet explorer 3.02
] >30 Megs of ram
] >
] >might be able to make the software go, even though I do not have a sound
] >card. If the miracle happened I would hear voices coming out of my tiny
] >little PC speaker, that usually only makes beeps -- well enough to
] >understand the words?
I had a game that did that, Ken's Labyrinth. Also "Dvorak On Typing".
They actually sounded better throught the PC speaker than the
soundcard (when I bought one). Unfortuneatly they got infected with
the NO_FRILL virus. (Stupid owner of the disks installed it on an
infected computer without write-protecting - not me!)
They needed a "fast computer" BTW. [yeah, any faster 386 will do <G>]
But under windows, the driver would take up a lot of CPU time since
it is relativly hard to do this - soundcards can use DMA so little
CPU involved whereas the PC speaker wasn't designed to playing
digital audio like this.
] Well, now, there's this very interesting thing. I have a lexmark printer
] and it comes with voices to tell me various things, "There is a paper jam"
] "printing complete" etc. One time I installed it when my soundcard wasn't
] working. The thing identified the lack of a sound card and asked if I
] wanted to install a pc speaker sound driver. I said yes. Lo and behold,
] it made my tinny little pc speaker speak!
Wow, the printer software actually included a PC speaker driver? Thats
not very common. :) There's probably version on simtel [look
/simtelnet/win3/sound/ probably]
] Didn't try realaudio. I don't know if realaudio decompression
] happens at the cpu or sound card.
Its the CPU, since there aren't any hardware real audio compressors
(AFAIK) but say for MPEG video you can get those add-on cards [or
some video cards have it built in].
BTW, pippi, when you say "tinny" do you mean "tiny" or are your
speakers without any bass at all. My 386 has a much better PC speaker
than an ex-friend's 486DX2, for example.
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